As we move into 2026, it is increasingly clear that the forces influencing global markets are not temporary disruptions, but durable shifts. Policy decisions, macroeconomic realignment, and rapid technological change are converging in ways that challenge long-held assumptions about stability, scale, and efficiency. For financial institutions and technology providers alike, the coming year will test not just innovation, but resilience and judgment.
Against that backdrop, I believe three themes will define the year ahead.
A NEW DEFINITION OF SUSTAINED VOLATILITY
Market volatility is no longer something that market participants weather in bursts. It has become a persistent feature of the operating environment, driven by overlapping policy shifts, evolving monetary frameworks, geopolitical uncertainty, and structural changes in market liquidity. Volatility has shifted from relative predictability with occasional curve balls to a state of capricious, sustained market activity.
This new paradigm places unprecedented challenges on risk models, execution technology, and organizational endurance. Systems, processes, and models are now being tasked to perform under continuous pressure. Assumptions about correlations, liquidity, and client behavior are being tested in real time, often with little historical precedent to fall back on. “Past performance is not indicative of future results” has never felt so close to home for many people operating in capital markets.
In this environment, resilience matters just as much as innovation, and both remain critical. The ability to operate consistently through a new era of market inputs—without sacrificing performance, transparency, or client trust—will continue to frame what it means to be a differentiator. Longevity and staying power are no longer virtues; they are practical indicators of whether a firm is prepared for what comes next.
FROM AI AS REPLACEMENT TO AI AS ENABLEMENT
The conversation around artificial intelligence is maturing. My personal perspective and practical application of AI in day-to-day life and business have shifted fundamentally in the last 6 months. While early narratives of where AI would take the world focused heavily on AI as a replacement for human effort, the more meaningful shift is now toward AI as an enabler—one that expands access, accelerates workflows, and amplifies expertise rather than displacing it.
We are seeing this play out in tangible ways. Agentic systems are beginning to reshape how processes, systems, and solutions are designed. New development paradigms, including “vibe coding,” are allowing individuals who previously lacked formal programming backgrounds to build tools, solve problems, and iterate quickly—provided they have access to well-designed APIs and reliable data. This does not mean AI is replacing core infrastructure, and I feel (see my earlier points on durability and today’s market climate) there is still a role for traditional systems development and infrastructure at the center of capital markets. But the time savings at the periphery of these systems, or just for those operating at the core of capital markets infrastructure, affords valuable energy that will be put back into innovation and acceleration.
This is the critical point in time for almost every business, especially those where software plays a significant role in defining workflows. AI’s impact is ultimately constrained by the quality and availability of the data it consumes. Models can accelerate decision-making and lower barriers to entry, but without clean, observable, real-time data, their usefulness quickly diminishes. The next phase of AI adoption in financial markets will be defined less by model sophistication and more by data integrity, accessibility, and context. A concept I’ve reinforced in the past.
Finding data, evolving organizational goal-setting, thought processes, and the means by which we allocate agency to AI while still recognizing the areas where cognitive horsepower will continue to outpace GPU farms, should be the focus of technology leaders.
At oneZero, we are looking at this with a fundamentally simple premise: think less about what AI can do to replace our own traditional effort today, and think more about how the outputs of our efforts enable our customer (be it an internal or external customer) to be more efficient via AI.
DIGITAL ASSETS FIND STAYING POWER THROUGH UTILITY
The digital asset ecosystem has entered a consequential phase that is evolving, in my opinion, as fast as AI’s impact on productivity. After renewed interest and investment, and following the policies implemented over the last 12 months, the focus of this entire space is shifting from speculation toward utility. The proving period has been extended, but it will not last forever. With a relatively narrow window—perhaps the next few years—this space as a whole needs to establish, prove, and scale meaningful, durable use cases to match the hype.
Stablecoins are increasingly at the center of this discussion, offering potential efficiency gains in settlement, funding, and cross-border transactions. At the same time, we are seeing consolidation as larger crypto-native firms acquire regulated entities and traditional capital markets infrastructure, signaling a move toward overlaying traditional market structure and regulatory safeguards, rather than isolation.
This is not a moment for unquestioning belief, but it is one that warrants close attention. The long-term role of digital assets will be determined not by ideology, but by whether they can deliver tangible value within existing financial frameworks. For market participants, the most productive stance today is thoughtful engagement—observing, learning, and evaluating where genuine utility begins to take shape.
As these themes unfold, one thing is clear: the coming year will reward discipline, adaptability, and a willingness to engage with change without being swept up by it. Markets will continue to evolve, technology will continue to accelerate, and the firms best positioned for the future will be those that combine innovation with proven endurance.
